Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld." In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee Film, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects, including the comedy Web site, comicwonder.com. He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com.

The Academy Awards are Sunday, and I want "Slumdog Millionaire" to win everything just because it is a feel good movie with graphic scenes of torture and insane poverty and it ends with a Bollywood style dance number on a train platform.

It's fun, funny, informative and the fact that Danny Boyle can successfully put an American-style love story inside the geography of the most extreme poverty and personal violence I've seen since "City of God," that fact alone means it deserves a couple of nice awards. Today, however, I am just going to talk about the Best Actor Award.

I haven't seen "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I kept waiting for a disc to come in the mail from the Screen Actors Guild, but I guess everyone is cutting back with the economy the way it is and everything.

I have been told that it is very good. I have lost a lot of interest in what can be done with computer imaging and the other kinds of special effects that are possible these days, so part of what has kept me away is knowing that only part of Brad Pitt is actually responsible for the performance.

The way I feel is related to the way I felt about the fellow who played Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Andy Serkis. I thought his performance was one of the best I had seen that year or in many years, but because so much of what we actually saw was computer graphics and not the flesh of Andy Serkis, no one paid any attention to him at awards time. No one, that is, except Peter Jackson, who cast him in the first place and knew just how important the living actor was to the performance.

It was Serkis, with electrodes attached to his body, that acted Gollum's part with the other actors. It was Serkis whose voice we hear, who made the word precious into a now celebrated caress with bloody fingers across stone. And it was Serkis that made a man into a monster, and a pitiable one at that.

But now, partially, I believe, because it is Brad Pitt, whom we all know from the line at the grocery store, and partially because enough time has passed and we know a little more about how the computer imaging process works, now it is possible for a computer created performance to be nominated for an Academy Award. The curious thing is that whereas Pitt's well-known face is used throughout the picture, other actors were used to "perform" as his equally well-known body as his character ages in reverse from an old man at birth to an infant at the end.

Mickey Rourke has a very good chance of winning for his "comeback" performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in "The Wrestler." Hollywood loves a comeback. I am sure that Mickey Rourke "inhabits" the character. But Darren Aronofsky is a brilliant director and built the story around Rourke's own history to the point that it is almost becomes a mockumentary. I am not sure that Rourke's performance should be elevated to the level of say Sean Penn's in "Milk." The only reason I might think about wanting Rourke to win is the off chance that he might bring one of his dog's up on stage with him to accept the award.

Sean Penn's performance is the work of a very gifted professional. I know his politics are anathema to many, but the work he has grown into as an actor and as a director should allow you to forgive him for speaking his mind pretty much the way you probably do, except that you disagree and that more people listen to him.

"Milk" is an important film and I hope it gets celebrated in some category at the awards because it raises an important issue. The public intolerance of a gay life style is not as strident as it was in 1978, when they tried to ban homosexuals from working in public schools, but it is still there. Men and women who either choose or by genetic predisposition prefer the intimate company of people of the same sex are still distrusted and even scorned by mainstream society, and that, in this day and age, is just silly.

I was trying to explain "Frost/Nixon" to a 13-year-old. From her point of view, it is pure fiction. I can explain to her that there once was a man who abused the office of the President of the United States to the point where he had to resign before being impeached and he was subsequently paid a very large sum of money to discuss, or try to avoid discussing, his crimes on television with a man who had previously done primarily comedy, and I've lost her just after the "... abused the office ..." part.

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Posted by viewfromnyave on Feb. 20, 2009 at 6:31 a.m. (report)

Couldn't agree more with you about Richard Jenkins. I was afraid that his role would be overlooked. I was tickled when the nominations came out.

Posted by hmmg on Feb. 19, 2009 at 12:11 p.m. (report)

Sean Penn, Milk - Thats who believe should win. Great Movie